A4-V2 Rocket Umbilical cable system – and ‘cat flap’?

Still frame showing the moment that the ground connection plugs are ripped from the umbilical cable after the magnetic plug ejection system failed to operate as a V2 rocket blasts off from PS-VII.

This video is one of a series that looks in some detail at less prominent equipment, in this case the umbilical cable system, aboard the V2 missile that are often hard to see on complete museum exhibits and are also not well covered by easily accessible literature.

Equipment bay test rig showing ‘Stotz’ ground connection plugs 1 & 2.

In this video, recorded in 2012, we look at one of the less obvious systems aboard the V2 missile, the ‘Stotz’ magnetic plug and umbilical cable system used to connect the missile directly to the ground-based launch control and pre-flight test equipment. The presentation features a rare relic of one of the two onboard connection sockets recovered from the Mittelwerk tunnels at Nordhausen in central Germany, where all of the combat V2s were manufactured. We also look at some archive footage to see the umbilical sockets in action and catch a glimpse of what Robert refers to in his introduction as the ‘cat flap’ in operation.

At V2 Rocket History our aim is to investigate the history and technology of the A4-V2 missile, and share the results in the most accessible and engaging way possible. Our general approach is to highlight the engineering and industrial aspects of the subject.

In this video we take a closer look at the propellant injector nozzles used on the A4 / V2 rocket. The world’s first ballistic missile and progenitor of all space exploration rockets employed a fuel and liquid oxygen injection system that consisted of complicated 18 pot, so-called, pre-mixer system using large numbers of ‘swirl’ nozzles in each pot. The system was only a prototype, a stop-gap, while an optimised version was developed. But the death of lead designer Walter Thiel in an air raid and the severe pressure to employ the V2 in combat as quickly as possible forced the designers put this steeply compromised prototype injector head into production. In this video, we look at the injectors used in the V2’s 18 pot head in detail and even test the mix patterns and flow rates of some of the injector nozzles. Presented by Robert J Dalby FRAS[…]

This month’s question

Mystery object

This part has a helicoid or screw shape, it seems that it might have been designed to screw into a pipe of some kind. But do you know what it is, and what it did? If you do, click on it and tell us.

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